


The Tucker Family

by Jelly_Jenkins



Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: Abuse, Angst, Child Abuse, Childhood, Childhood Trauma, Gen, Graphic Description, Heavy Angst, Malcolm's Childhood, POV First Person, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:22:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25496020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jelly_Jenkins/pseuds/Jelly_Jenkins
Summary: Malcolm describes his less-than-picturesque upbringing, starting at 5 years old.Content Warning: graphic description of child abuse and beating this chapter.
Relationships: Malcolm Tucker & Malcolm's Sister, Malcolm Tucker & Original Female Character(s)
Kudos: 5





	The Tucker Family

I was 5 years old when I first felt the full extent of my father’s wrath.

5 years old. I barely knew how to read at that point. My sister, Maria, was 5 years old, too. She, my mother, my father, and I had moved into our shotty little house in the Scottish village of Pittenweem. Pittenweem was a fishing village on the coast of Fife, which on hot summer days stunk of wasted, soured spiny lobsters thrown out into dumpsters. As I recall, our house was up on the hill away from the harbour. The house had clay tiled roofs that hadn’t been replaced since the 1600s, which lacked the ability to keep out water on rainy days. Most days we experienced were rainy, because it’s Scotland. My earliest memory, in fact, is my mother, Maria and I running about placing buckets underneath pouring stalactites of rainwater. We had a front yard the size of a postage stamp, half of which was shaded by the adolescent nuisance of an ash tree. Most days me and my sister joined the other children in the downtown district or in the fields, running freely and playing games. One afternoon, my sister, my mates, and I had headed down to the chemist to pick up candy and magazines.

“Good afternoon, children.” The cashier, who to my prepubescent brain, was about a million years old.

Us kids replied in an uncoordinated fashion. Most of which were along the lines of “Afternoon, Mr. So-And-So.” We feathered out into the aisles, each intending to either look at or buy something different. Me and my sister ducked into the comic aisle, along with this older boy who’s name was something like Gary.

“Hey! Bitchin’! They got the new edition of  _ Eagle _ .” The older boy said. I should probably disclose that he was in that phase of childhood where you swear unnecessarily all the time for no reason at all. We weren’t around to play with him anymore once our parents found out about his cursing.

“Lemme see!” I yanked it out of his hands impatiently, so both me and my sister could see. He smacked me across the back of the head, a move he learned from his older brother, no doubt. Looking back on it now, there were more copies on the shelf so I don’t know why he had to do that. He stole it back out of my hands.

He made a mean face. “I’m older, so me first, arsehole.” We then patiently spent the next 10 minutes waiting for him to painfully leaf through each page, before he shoved it in our face and said “Here!”

The cover fell open to a sea of a comic strip. The red and yellow seemed nearly neon. I don’t exactly remember what the comic entailed that set this off in my mind, but I became inspired to make a rocket of my own. I begged someone else who’d bought a coke to let me keep the bottle. When me and my sister got home, we went into the garden shed and got out something that had a warning label on the side that said “Warning: Flammable.”

“Hold the bottle steady, Maria, I’m gonna pour it in.” I said. She grabbed it at the bottom. I poured it in, spilling a bit over the side and onto her hands. 

Just then, we heard the front door open and close. We jumped and looked at each other for a minute, staring each other in the face nervously. Our father must’ve gotten home early that day. We stayed frozen for a minute more, just making sure he wasn’t going to come outside and see us pouring something we weren’t supposed to be touching into a glass bottle. Once we were sure we were safe, we put the substance away on the shelf where we found it and found a rag. I wanted to have a realistic engine effect, I guess, so we went out to the fields and lit the rag on fire with a spare box of matches.

“Throw it, Harry!” I shouted at some older boy, who launched the lit accidentally-made molotov across the field. We watched it arch down into the earth. Immediately, a fireball happened and singed the ground and lit some dead brush on fire nearby. As a group, we all looked at each other and collectively decided to scatter.

Me and my sister ran back into the shed to figure out what to do. It wasn’t long before we heard the two-toned sirens of fire engines in the distance. We stayed out there for a few hours, discussing among ourselves how we were going to break it to our parents as best we could. Our mother eventually called us in for dinner.

We were deathly quiet, sitting around the dinner table eating our bangers and mash. Our mother eventually cut the silence to say “Mrs. Pilfrey called this evening.” She made direct eye contact with me, and then with my sister, and finally with my father, as she continued with her sentence. “There’s been a fire in the fields just outside town.”

We stayed silent. “Your mother’s talking to you.” My father said sternly. I didn’t know what to say, and I continued to remain mute. “Malcolm!” He yelled.

I could feel my eyes well with tears of fear. My sister piped up, “We didn’t know what was going to happen, we’re sorry!”

“That’s it.” His chair tipped over as he quickly stood and grabbed us both by the arm. His grip later made a nasty bruise. “You’re both idiots, you know? Huh?” He dragged us to the living room and threw us on the floor.

As he removed his belt, we could hear our mother call out our father’s name, panicked, “Robert! Robert, please!”

We were lashed for what felt like hours, with the buckle side biting into our flesh like a million spider bites a minute. He switched between us with each lash to our backs. I can still remember the pain now in my middle age. We learned two rules that night. Do not play with flammable things, and do not cross our father.

Once my father’s fit of rage was over and he receded upstairs into his study, my mother picked us up and dusted our raw backs off. I remember sitting on the bathroom countertop and being stitched up only vaguely, now. However, I do recall one thing my mother repeated over and over again, which was “Sorry.” At the time I didn’t understand why she was apologizing, as she hadn’t inflicted us with these wounds. As I grew, and the beatings continued, I understood why.


End file.
